The lyric is actually "Yuke!", meaning "Go!", but it sounds appropriately close to "UK" to use as a title for a blog post detailing exactly when Battle of the Planets was on TV in Britain.
When I went to Tokyo for that particularly wonderful TV show, we went to a karaoke bar where they had a phone-book size listing of anime theme tunes you could sing. The cameraman, at my request, gave us a wonderful performance of the Gatchaman song, and I resolved to learn the lyrics in case I ever get invited back to Japan for a similar experience. Or just learn to read hiragana more quickly than one letter a second, so I can do the whole karaoke thing properly. Or write the lyrics down in romaji in advance of going to the karaoke bar. There are all kinds of ways I could prepare to do this song at karaoke, and I still haven't done any of them! Remind me, please, if I ever get invited back to Tokyo.
But anyway, I was reading on Tom Brevoort's blog about him watching Battle of the Planets when it first aired on US TV in 1978, and it made me curious to see exactly when the cartoon made it to these shores - I used to watch it on the BBC when I was very young, at some point in the early eighties, but that's as far as my memory goes. So I took to the BBC Genome site to find out exactly when the show appeared on the BBC, and wow, it was a weird broadcast schedule!
Of course, appearing in the Radio Times and thus being immortalised on the Genome site doesn't necessarily mean something will be shown on TV. There could be last-minute changes, strikes, newsflashes, Mary Whitehouse protests, all kinds of things that disrupted the BBC, but let's assume that this relatively harmless adventure cartoon made it to the airwaves without any problems.
There were 105 episodes of Gatchaman, but only 85 were adapted into Battle of the Planets. Most of the ongoing Gatchaman continuity was stripped out, so that Battle of the Planets could be shown and watched in just about any order, but according to this excellent website, there was a recommended episode order created by Sandy Frank Entertainment, distributed to every country and station that bought the episodes, and invariably completely ignored by those buyers. But it does look like a good order to watch them in, and probably lines up with the production order!
The BBC, though, did their own thing entirely. Sometimes it looks like they were following some sort of logic in deciding which episodes to show and when, but mostly it seems entirely random. They certainly weren't adhering to Sandy Frank's suggested order, nor the actual US transmission order, nor the Gatchaman order (Gatchaman episode numbers were used as production numbers by Sandy Frank, so might have been available for the BBC schedulers to see).
Another entirely different British episode order was offered by Longman home video releases - they gave us eight tapes, with four episodes on each, in or around 1984. Bad timing on their part; it was just before the new regulations requiring all video tape releases to be submitted to the BBFC for certification, meaning all uncertified tapes had to be removed from the shelves (all the hysteria about "video nasties" meant a lot of innocent cartoons suffered too!). But luckily I (in my capacity of custodian of my brother's video collection) have several of them here anyway!
The listings below show the episodes in the order they were shown by the BBC. The numbers shown by the episode titles are:
BBC - order of BBC first broadcast
SF - Sandy Frank's recommended order
US - original US broadcast order
G - Gatchaman episode number
LON - Longman home video order
So, it's 1979, the BBC have acquired a pile of 85 episodes of this cartoon - what do they do with it? To be fair, this is a few years before the flood of twenty-minute American cartoons hit these shores with their accompanying toy lines in the shops, and the BBC might have been uncertain whether this kind of thing would be popular. So they aired a sample in the autumn season, in the 4:35 slot reserved for slightly more mature children's entertainment, after Playschool but before John Craven's Newsround. Described in the Radio Times as "A new cartoon series of 12 science fiction adventure stories," it consisted of:
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
1
1
15
1
1-1
Attack of the Space Terrapin
Monday 03 Sep 1979 16:45
2
16
16
2
3-3
Rescue of the Astronauts
Monday 10 Sep 1979 16:35
3
17
19
6
3-2
Big Robot Gold Grab
Monday 17 Sep 1979 16:35
4
38
38
9
7-1
The Jupiter Moon Menace
Monday 24 Sep 1979 16:35
5
23
22
11
Space Rocket Escort
Monday 01 Oct 1979 16:40
6
26
26
16
Microfilm Mystery
Monday 08 Oct 1979 16:40
7
18
21
24
The Musical Mummy
Monday 15 Oct 1979 16:40
8
13
2
25
The Fiery Lava Giant
Monday 22 Oct 1979 16:40
9
14
5
27
4-4
Race Against Disaster
Monday 29 Oct 1979 16:40
10
2
4
36
7-3
Siege of the Squids
Monday 05 Nov 1979 16:40
11
36
36
37
Orion, the Wonder Dog of Space
Monday 12 Nov 1979 16:40
12
11
6
41
The Space Rock Concert
Monday 19 Nov 1979 16:40
Well, "Attack of the Space Terrapin" is clearly the first episode, introducing the characters and format. Everyone realises that, except whoever created the American schedule. But these twelve BBC episodes do run in ascending order of the Gatchaman / production number, meaning that possibly the BBC's pile of tapes was put in that sequence, and somebody went through it picking out favourite episodes to put on TV?
Next summer, the same batch of episodes got repeated on Tuesdays...
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
1
1
15
1
1-1
Attack of the Space Terrapin
Tuesday 01 Jul 1980 16:45
2
16
16
2
3-3
Rescue of the Astronauts
Tuesday 08 Jul 1980 16:40
3
17
19
6
3-2
Big Robot Gold Grab
Tuesday 15 Jul 1980 16:40
(with a two-week break because of coverage of the Olympics)
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
4
38
38
9
7-1
The Jupiter Moon Menace
Tuesday 05 Aug 1980 16:40
5
23
22
11
Space Rocket Escort
Tuesday 12 Aug 1980 16:40
6
26
26
16
Microfilm Mystery
Tuesday 19 Aug 1980 16:40
7
18
21
24
The Musical Mummy
Tuesday 26 Aug 1980 16:40
8
13
2
25
The Fiery Lava Giant
Tuesday 02 Sep 1980 16:40
But after eight episodes, we've reached the start of the new season. Strangely, this meant relocating the Battle of the Planets repeats to Saturday mornings...
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
9
14
5
27
4-4
Race Against Disaster
Saturday 06 Sep 1980 09:15
10
2
4
36
7-3
Siege of the Squids
Saturday 13 Sep 1980 09:15
In 1980, TV wasn't a round-the-clock thing. Even "Breakfast TV" hadn't been invented yet. 9:15 in the morning was when BBC1 started transmitting - Battle of the Planets fans would be excitedly watching the test card, waiting for the show to start. And the Saturday morning magazine show "Multi-Coloured Swap Shop" wasn't an all-year-round thing; it started in late September and ran until late March every year. These Battle of the Planets episodes were followed by a repeat of "The Flashing Blade", a Bugs Bunny cartoon and then something sports-related.
This slot only lasted two weeks - BBC scheduling for early Saturdays was strangely incoherent. The next week, BBC1 opened with "Buford Files and Dinky Dog", and the week after that it was "Athlete", which was usually shown some time after ten. But the following week, perhaps because "Better Badminton", the new show which took over the 9:15 slot for a month or so, wasn't ready yet, Battle of the Planets made a one-off return!
And it wasn't the episode you might expect - Orion the Wonder Dog and The Space Rock Concert seem to have never been repeated by the BBC. No, it was one we'd never seen before!
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
13
65
65
51
8-3
Peaks of Planet Odin
Saturday 04 Oct 1980 09:05
An all-new, thirteenth episode, starting at an unusually early five past nine in order to fit in before Swap Shop. This one was never repeated either.
But shortly after that, the Friday afternoon slot got what the Radio Times describes as "a series of five cartoons" in the weeks leading up to the Christmas holidays.
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
14
34
34
42
Prisoners in Space
Friday 21 Nov 1980 16:20
15
39
39
45
7-4
Seals of Sytron
Friday 28 Nov 1980 16:20
16
35
35
47
Capture of the Galaxy Code
Friday 05 Dec 1980 16:20
17
21
17
48
Raid on a Nearby Planet
Friday 12 Dec 1980 16:20
18
44
44
49
2-3
Keyop Does It All
Friday 19 Dec 1980 16:20
And immediately after that, there was a new feature at lunchtimes, every day except Saturday, Christmas Day and New Year's Day!
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
19
59
59
32
8-1
Curse of the Cuttlefish, Part 1
Monday 22 Dec 1980 12:15
20
60
60
33
8-2
Curse of the Cuttlefish, Part 2
Tuesday 23 Dec 1980 12:15
21
24
24
74
6-2
Museum of Mystery
Wednesday 24 Dec 1980 12:15
22
27
27
83
Mission to Inner Space
Friday 26 Dec 1980 12:30
23
81
79
39
The Fierce Flowers, Part 1
Sunday 28 Dec 1980 11:40
24
82
80
40
The Fierce Flowers, Part 2
Monday 29 Dec 1980 12:15
25
42
42
86
Super Space Spies
Tuesday 30 Dec 1980 12:15
26
43
43
96
Vacation on Venus
Wednesday 31 Dec 1980 12:30
27
20
23
73
The Space Safari
Friday 02 Jan 1981 12:10
There's definitely some logical thinking on the part of the BBC schedule people. Showing the two-part episodes on consecutive days is a good idea.
And now we're into 1981, and significantly this is the point where TV Comic started to run a weekly Battle of the Planets series (starting in the issue dated 17 April). It ran until the end of 1983, and it's fair to say this means the show had become a genuine part of the nation's popular culture (among children, at least). This was an original British comic strip, two pages a week with continuing storylines, unrelated to the American comic which had come out over there in 1979.
I never got TV Comic myself, so missed out on this, but we did have the 1984 "Holiday Special", which reprinted two issues of the American comic in black and white.
And so the BBC naturally wanted to put the show back on the air, right? They still had 58 episodes which had never been shown...
Well, actually, they ran some repeats. The episodes that were shown on Friday afternoons must have been filed away somewhere, because they never saw the light of day again, but the nine that had been on at lunchtimes over Christmas were still to hand, and ready to be shown a second time. The order has got mixed up, though, and they seem to have pulled one out at random to put on the schedules on the May Bank Holiday.
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
21
24
24
74
6-2
Museum of Mystery
Monday 25 May 1981 10:30
And then on two consecutive Saturdays a month later, it's the return of the Curse of the Cuttlefish.
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
19
59
59
32
8-1
Curse of the Cuttlefish, Part 1
Saturday 27 Jun 1981 10:20
20
60
60
33
8-2
Curse of the Cuttlefish, Part 2
Saturday 04 Jul 1981 10:25
And THEN, if the Genome site is to be believed... and I'm sorry, but on this occasion I really don't believe it... an all-new episode was shown on a Friday morning in August:
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
28
37
37
59
7-2
Secret Island
Friday 07 Aug 1981 10:10
This comes from one of the rare weeks in history when the Radio Times wasn't published, due to a printing dispute. The Genome details for that week have been provided by "Additional Research". Did the one week there was no Radio Times really coincide with the one time the BBC showed an episode of Battle of the Planets on a Friday morning? It seems unlikely. But on the other hand, where did the Genome researcher get the detail from if it wasn't shown that day? There's no other showing of "Secret Island" listed on Genome, ever. It's all a tantalising mystery that I'd really love to unravel one day.
Later in August, though, we settle into a weekly schedule of Saturday mornings. It was on every week, immediately after a repeat of The Monkees, and that does ring a bell in my memory. I have a feeling I might have watched them both on Saturday mornings in 1981, though we're still a few weeks away from my fifth birthday at this point. My mother might well have had the Monkees on, though; it was her kind of thing.
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
23
81
79
39
The Fierce Flowers, Part 1
Saturday 22 Aug 1981 10:10
24
82
80
40
The Fierce Flowers, Part 2
Saturday 29 Aug 1981 10:15
29
25
25
68
Silent City
Saturday 05 Sep 1981 09:25
22
27
27
83
Mission to Inner Space
Saturday 12 Sep 1981 10:15
26
43
43
96
Vacation on Venus
Saturday 19 Sep 1981 10:15
25
42
42
86
Super Space Spies
Saturday 26 Sep 1981 10:15
Hey, look! There's an all-new episode among the repeats! If, again, the Radio Times is right. "Silent City" is marked as a repeat, but it doesn't seem to have been shown before. The missing one from this batch of episodes is "The Space Safari", but we're going to be seeing that one again not once but twice in years to come, so that would suggest it really didn't get shown in this batch.
That's it for Battle of the Planets for quite a while, though. No daily showings over Christmas this year, which must have disappointed the TV Comic-reading kids who remembered the festive season in 1980. They just had to wait until a pair of new episodes showed up on Saturdays in the Easter holidays of 1982!
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
30
41
41
71
The Alien Bigfoot
Saturday 03 Apr 1982 10:25
31
29
29
87
Cupid Does It to Keyop
Saturday 10 Apr 1982 10:25
Then another long wait, until the final edition of "Get Set" (the Saturday morning magazine show that filled the summer schedule before being replaced by "Saturday Superstore") found that it had used up every episode of "Undersea Kingdom" with a week to spare, and had a gap in the usual slot. This is where we get to see "The Space Safari" again!
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
27
20
23
73
The Space Safari
Saturday 25 Sep 1982 10:25
1982, all in all, was a dull year for Battle of the Planets fans. But the show made a welcome return to daily episodes in the Christmas holidays!
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
32
3
7
62
Decoys of Doom
Tuesday 21 Dec 1982 10:25
33
61
61
69
Peril in the Pyramids
Wednesday 22 Dec 1982 10:25
34
51
51
100
G-Force in the Future
Thursday 23 Dec 1982 10:25
35
69
68
89
6-3
Island of Fear
Friday 24 Dec 1982 10:25
36
9
10
80
Panic of the Peacock
Monday 27 Dec 1982 10:40
37
62
62
93
Save the Space Colony
Tuesday 28 Dec 1982 10:40
38
67
66
72
Invasion of the Locusts
Wednesday 29 Dec 1982 10:30
39
6
1
58
1-4
Giant From the Planet Zyr
Thursday 30 Dec 1982 10:30
30
41
41
71
The Alien Bigfoot
Friday 31 Dec 1982 10:30
31
29
29
87
Cupid Does It to Keyop
Monday 03 Jan 1983 10:25
Eight never-before-seen episodes, and repeats of the pair from Easter! We're now well into the fourth year of the BBC having access to this cartoon, and still less than half of the episodes have made it to our screens, but perhaps that made it even more exciting when a new batch appeared!
1983 was another quiet year, though. It seemed like things might get good when Battle of the Planets returned to the weekday afternoon slot in July...
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
40
28
28
10
5-1
A Swarm of Robot Ants
Tuesday 26 Jul 1983 16:45
41
32
32
12
Beast with a Sweet Tooth
Tuesday 02 Aug 1983 16:45
33
61
61
69
Peril in the Pyramids
Tuesday 09 Aug 1983 16:45
27
20
23
73
The Space Safari
Tuesday 16 Aug 1983 16:45
36
9
10
80
Panic of the Peacock
Tuesday 23 Aug 1983 16:45
35
69
68
89
6-3
Island of Fear
Tuesday 30 Aug 1983 16:45
34
51
51
100
G-Force in the Future
Tuesday 06 Sep 1983 16:45
... but although we got two new episodes, they were followed by five repeats, taken from the ones shown the previous Christmas. Strangely, though, "Decoys of Doom" never gets a second showing, and "The Space Safari" becomes the one and only Battle of the Planets episode to get a third airing on the BBC!
The other three new ones from last Christmas get repeated this year...
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
37
62
62
93
Save the Space Colony
Wednesday 21 Dec 1983 09:20
38
67
66
72
Invasion of the Locusts
Thursday 22 Dec 1983 09:20
39
6
1
58
1-4
Giant From the Planet Zyr
Friday 23 Dec 1983 09:50
... but the BBC seems to have exhausted its supplies for the moment, and there's nothing to put on in the second week of the holidays this time around. The timeslot was filled with Wacky Races and Play Chess, with Bill Hartston. Bill Hartston is very cool, but it's a shame he had to replace Battle of the Planets.
The TV Comic series has ended now, and viewers must have assumed they'd seen the last of Battle of the Planets. But how wrong they were! 1984 turned out to be a great year for the fans! That year gave us twenty-nine never-before-seen episodes, and no repeats! And that was the year those Longman videos hit the shelves, too! And that Holiday Special comic which I really loved! It all starts with daily early-morning episodes in the Easter holidays:
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
42
48
48
3
The Space Mummy
Monday 16 Apr 1984 09:00
43
46
46
4
The Space Serpent
Tuesday 17 Apr 1984 09:00
44
40
40
5
3-1
Ghost Ship of the Planet Mir
Wednesday 18 Apr 1984 09:00
45
54
54
7
Ace From Outer Space
Thursday 19 Apr 1984 09:00
46
74
72
8
Fearful Sea Anemone
Friday 20 Apr 1984 09:00
47
50
50
14
Perilous Pleasure Cruise
Monday 23 Apr 1984 09:00
48
7
9
15
2-2
Thing with 1,000 Eyes
Tuesday 24 Apr 1984 09:00
49
75
75
17
The Alien Beetles
Wednesday 25 Apr 1984 09:00
50
64
64
23
Magnetic Attraction
Thursday 26 Apr 1984 09:00
51
71
70
31
6-4
The Galaxy Girls
Friday 27 Apr 1984 09:00
And it was a very late Easter in 1984, so as soon as you're back at school we're into the May bank holidays, which each got a new episode too!
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
52
68
67
43
8-4
Victims of the Hawk
Monday 07 May 1984 09:00
53
33
33
44
Raid on Riga
Monday 28 May 1984 09:00
And then we're back on Children's BBC for the summer season, weekly at 4:45 or thereabouts:
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
54
4
14
21
1-2
Mad New Ruler of Spectra
Tuesday 24 Jul 1984 16:45
55
49
49
22
The Sea Dragon
Tuesday 31 Jul 1984 16:45
56
77
78
26
4-3
The Bat Ray Bombers
Tuesday 07 Aug 1984 16:45
57
45
45
35
Demons of the Desert
Tuesday 14 Aug 1984 16:45
58
8
13
57
2-1
Fastest Gun in the Galaxy
Tuesday 21 Aug 1984 16:45
59
55
55
60
Giant Space Bat
Tuesday 28 Aug 1984 16:40
60
63
63
63
6-1
Zoltar Strikes Out
Wednesday 05 Sep 1984 16:30
61
78
77
70
4-1
Rage of the Robotoids
Wednesday 12 Sep 1984 16:30
62
73
74
76
The Awesome Ray Force
Wednesday 19 Sep 1984 16:30
And then... I'm not sure what's going on here. There wasn't a two-week half-term holiday in October 1984 - as usual, some schools had the first week and some had the second, most likely, but every schoolkid must have missed one week's worth of new episodes shown on weekday mornings for a fortnight!
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
63
57
57
46
Giant Gila Monster
Monday 22 Oct 1984 09:00
64
79
82
52
The Sky is Falling!, Part 1
Tuesday 23 Oct 1984 09:00
65
80
83
53
The Sky is Falling!, Part 2
Wednesday 24 Oct 1984 09:00
66
30
30
54
Raid of the Red Scorpion
Friday 26 Oct 1984 09:00
67
12
18
55
Mammoth Shark Menace
Monday 29 Oct 1984 09:00
68
19
8
61
5-3
Attack of the Alien Wasp
Tuesday 30 Oct 1984 09:00
69
56
56
65
2-4
The Great Brain Robbery
Wednesday 31 Oct 1984 09:00
70
10
3
67
Raid of the Space Octopus
Friday 02 Nov 1984 09:00
But what a great year for Battle of the Planets! No Christmas holiday episodes this year, which is a shame, but that six and a half months of new episodes was more than enough to keep the people happy. Could it continue into 1985? Well, no. The stack of unbroadcast episodes is running low, all these years after the BBC bought them. We're heading for a lot of repeats in what turned out to be the show's final year on British TV.
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
42
48
48
3
The Space Mummy
Saturday 02 Mar 1985 08:35
43
46
46
4
The Space Serpent
Saturday 09 Mar 1985 08:35
44
40
40
5
3-1
Ghost Ship of the Planet Mir
Saturday 16 Mar 1985 08:35
45
54
54
7
Ace From Outer Space
Saturday 23 Mar 1985 08:35
46
74
72
8
Fearful Sea Anemone
Saturday 30 Mar 1985 08:35
47
50
50
14
Perilous Pleasure Cruise
Saturday 06 Apr 1985 08:35
48
7
9
15
2-2
Thing with 1,000 Eyes
Saturday 13 Apr 1985 08:35
Saturday morning repeats, at the unprecedentedly early hour of 8:35, showing the episodes that previously appeared over Easter 1984. The department responsible for Saturdays were clearly different from the department responsible for Easter holiday weekdays, because the last few Saturday repeats there came in this year's Easter, which got something different on Monday to Friday!
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
71
5
12
75
1-3
Peril of the Praying Mantis
Monday 01 Apr 1985 09:20
72
58
58
77
The Duplicate King
Tuesday 02 Apr 1985 09:20
73
53
53
88
Tentacles From Space
Wednesday 03 Apr 1985 09:20
74
52
52
90
The Awesome Armadillo
Thursday 04 Apr 1985 09:20
75
47
47
97
Rockets Out of Control
Friday 05 Apr 1985 09:20
76
66
69
98
G-Force Defector
Monday 08 Apr 1985 09:20
77
84
84
91
Invasion of the Space Center, Part 1
Tuesday 09 Apr 1985 09:20
78
85
85
92
Invasion of the Space Center, Part 2
Wednesday 10 Apr 1985 09:20
79
70
73
99
Strike at Spectra
Thursday 11 Apr 1985 09:20
80
72
71
101
The Conway Tape Tap
Friday 12 Apr 1985 09:20
Once again, ten brand-new adventures in the Easter holidays! And then we're back on Wednesday afternoons for the summer season, but with only two unshown episodes before we go back to repeats...
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
81
76
76
79
4-2
Defector to Spectra
Wednesday 05 Jun 1985 16:35
82
31
31
84
5-4
Spectra Space Spider
Wednesday 12 Jun 1985 16:35
40
28
28
10
5-1
A Swarm of Robot Ants
Wednesday 19 Jun 1985 16:35
41
32
32
12
Beast with a Sweet Tooth
Wednesday 26 Jun 1985 16:40
54
4
14
21
1-2
Mad New Ruler of Spectra
Wednesday 03 Jul 1985 16:40
55
49
49
22
The Sea Dragon
Wednesday 10 Jul 1985 16:40
56
77
78
26
4-3
The Bat Ray Bombers
Wednesday 17 Jul 1985 16:40
57
45
45
35
Demons of the Desert
Wednesday 24 Jul 1985 16:40
58
8
13
57
2-1
Fastest Gun in the Galaxy
Wednesday 31 Jul 1985 16:40
59
55
55
60
Giant Space Bat
Wednesday 07 Aug 1985 16:40
60
63
63
63
6-1
Zoltar Strikes Out
Wednesday 14 Aug 1985 16:40
61
78
77
70
4-1
Rage of the Robotoids
Wednesday 21 Aug 1985 16:35
62
73
74
76
The Awesome Ray Force
Wednesday 28 Aug 1985 16:35
49
75
75
17
The Alien Beetles
Wednesday 04 Sep 1985 16:40
71
5
12
75
1-3
Peril of the Praying Mantis
Wednesday 11 Sep 1985 16:10
72
58
58
77
The Duplicate King
Wednesday 18 Sep 1985 16:10
Interestingly, the first two repeats had been shown for the first time in summer 1983. Then came the nine from summer 1984, then "The Alien Beetles" from Easter 1984, then the first two from Easter 1985.
What makes this more fascinating is that "Saturday Picture Show", the summer Saturday-morning magazine show of 1985 was also showing Battle of the Planets during this time, for at least ten weeks - but it infuriatingly didn't list the episode titles in the Radio Times! So all I can offer is...
?
Saturday 29 Jun 1985 08:30
?
Saturday 06 Jul 1985 08:30
?
Saturday 13 Jul 1985 08:30
?
Saturday 20 Jul 1985 08:30
?
Saturday 27 Jul 1985 08:30
?
Saturday 03 Aug 1985 08:30
?
Saturday 10 Aug 1985 08:30
?
Saturday 17 Aug 1985 08:30
?
Saturday 24 Aug 1985 08:30
?
Saturday 31 Aug 1985 08:30
The Radio Times for the 17th of August doesn't mention Battle of the Planets at all, but I assume it was still on. Which episodes would these have been? I would guess the two remaining unrepeated ones from Easter 1984, and the eight episodes from the October double-half-term, but guesswork is all I have to go on here.
And finally, there was one more repeat popped up on our screens at the end of September...
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
73
53
53
88
Tentacles From Space
Saturday 28 Sep 1985 08:40
And that's that. No more Battle of the Planets on the BBC. It's taken them six years, but they've got through that pile of episodes at last. Except, of course, for the three that they must have lost somewhere...
BBC
SF
US
G
LON
X
15
11
18
3-4
A Whale Joins G-Force
X
22
20
30
5-2
The Ghostly Grasshopper
X
83
81
95
Charioteers of Changu
These three seem never to have made it to our screens over here. Unless you bought the Longman videos which included two of them, of course! But poor old Charioteers of Changu never saw the light of day.
All things considered, I doubt anybody in the whole of the UK watched every episode of Battle of the Planets. Catching them all, with such erratic scheduling, would have been an impossible task even for the most obsessive viewer! It's not like Thundercats, which came just a year and a bit after "Tentacles From Space" closed off the adventures of G-Force - that one came in two solid batches of episodes, shown weekly and repeated several times, in the days when home video recorders were a lot more common. The BBC had maybe learnt a lesson or two by then, just in time to provide me with my particular 1980s cartoon obsession - but Battle of the Planets is another one I love today even despite only catching a few stray episodes here and there over my younger years! It really must have been something special!
This month's Excel Esports battle wasn't my best performance, but after work (this one was an early-morning competition, starting at 7:30, so I fitted it in before my nine-to-five job) I spent a leisurely hour or so doing the tasks properly, and looking up the most efficient ways to do them. I'm still not one hundred percent certain what a "dynamic array" is, but a lot of people seem to be talking about how great it is that modern Excel can do things with them - and I do now know how to do sumif kind of things on row and column headers, as well as the wonders of 'textbefore' and 'textafter'. These things will come in handy in future competitions - and who knows, maybe in real life too?
But enough of my new competitive obsession. Let's talk about the old one! See, I'm not running an MSO memory competition this year, but I'm already formulating plans for next year's. Let's face it, the MSO format doesn't really fit with the IAM format - the MSO wants short competitions, 4 hours in length at most, and that gives me the opportunity to experiment a bit. Do something different - or dare I say something truly 'memorable'? Stay tuned, and I'll tell you all about it in good time!
Or if you're the person or people who have been reading my old blog entries about the Cambridge/Friendly Memory Championships of years gone by, well, maybe there'll be another one of those next year too! Memory is making a comeback!
I finished the British Othello Championship 2024 in sixth place out of fourteen competitors, winning five out of nine games, and thus achieving what genuinely is my usual goal in othello competitions of "better than fifty percent success", the exact meaning of which phrase can be twisted to suit the results I actually achieve. You can certainly make out that I achieved my aims this time around, and give Stephen Fry an appropriately celebratory script to read out in the next documentary about me!
And I was in fact pleasantly surprised and impressed by how well I played - I beat Iain Barrass, which takes some doing, and newcomer Elijah Everett, who's actually quite good, and even when losing to the likes of Guy, Ian and Marius I felt like they were the kinds of games where it could have gone my way if they'd let their concentration slip and made the slightest of blunders. I also lost 33-31 to Digby when I probably was well on top at one point, but that's a minor blip, and he played well too!
Guy became the new British Champion, beating Imre in the final to win his first title since 2014, that time when I came second. I haven't boasted about that for a long time, have I? I came second in the Nationals once. Without exercise or anything, but with a lot of good players not being there or losing games they probably deserved to win against me.
So in summary, I'm extremely happy with my othello performance, and grateful to everyone who came to the competition and made it happen!
A lot of people have asked me if my training in that documentary last year involved a lot of montages of me exercising to the Rocky music. It didn't, really, but today's weekly training session was exactly that kind of thing! Geoff expressed the view that the Rocky soundtrack makes everyone exercise better, so I did my very vigorous workout to that accompaniment!
Push-ups, squats, sit-ups, bicep crunches and walking on the treadmill, and lots of it - I worked up a real sweat, and I bet I'll be sore in the morning, but it feels surprisingly good. Now the big question is, will it improve my performance at the UK Othello Championship at the weekend?
Or would it have been better to learn how to play othello a little better, at some point over the last twenty years? No, I'm sure press-ups are the key. I'm sure to win!
You might have noticed that I've been on something of a childhood-nostalgia kick just lately. My brother's been spending the week at my place, in celebration of his 45th birthday - an age so alarmingly ancient that it would drive anybody back to their infancy, even if we hadn't been sent an enormous pile of childhood photos to look through as well!
And one thing I've been recollecting is what was probably the second-coolest epic dream I had as a child (I'll have to tell you about the very coolest one some other time), and how I can pin it down to an almost exact date, because it related to the plot of this issue of the Transformers comic!
I think all my blog-readers need to read through this comic before I tell you about the dream it inspired - and please do read it in the right historical context. The autumn of 1986 was a very exciting time. I turned ten years old on October 14th, I was in my last year at primary school, and most significantly of all, there was the most amazingly thrilling and exciting story in Transformers! My parents must have separated at around this time too, but that made little or no impression on my conscious or subconscious mind, quite possibly because the Transformers comic was just so cool, I didn't pay attention to anything else.
The cover date is October 4th, 1986. The internet seems fairly certain that Marvel UK's cover dates at this point were the off-sale date, and the comics were released the previous Saturday. We got our comics (Transformers and the Beano) every week on Sunday, along with a Sunday Times for our father, from the newsagent in Tattershall, about a four mile drive away. We really did live in the middle of nowhere.
But that means I must have first read this one on Sunday 28th September - which was actually my dad's fortieth birthday. I'm sure I would have given him a card, and possibly even a present too, although he was a hopeless person to buy things for. And not being someone who celebrated birthdays, I'm sure he wouldn't have minded at all that his adoring sons spent the whole day reading this comic about toy robots and the Secret Wars sticker album that came with it as a free gift!
We're in part 3 of the unprecedentedly epic story, "Target: 2006", which was the first that British Transformers fans had heard of the upcoming theatrical Transformers movie - a concept so amazing that it captured the imagination of everyone in the country (except maybe the ones a bit older than nearly-ten).
The British Transformers comic divided its time between reprinted American stories and (much superior) original British adventures, worked into the same continuity. We'd had a run of eight consecutive weekly British issues over the summer containing American reprints (the US Transformers comic #17-#20), which gave ample breathing space to run a long string of UK original material - the four-part "In the National Interest" in №74-№77, followed immediately by the amazing eleven-part "Target: 2006" before it returned to the American comic.
(Incidentally, #21 of the American series is meant to follow immediately from #20, with Skids returning from his solo adventure. The dialogue was changed when it was printed in the UK comic to say that he was going to wait around for a while to let his wounds heal before going back to rejoin the Autobots. The UK comic was good at that kind of thing.)
If you haven't already, please go out and buy the whole of Target: 2006 in its collected edition. You won't regret it! Obviously it's best appreciated when read one weekly installment at a time, over eleven weeks in 1986, but the collected edition is the second best option.
In the story so far (and despite this being 'part 3', the 'prologue' in №78 is really just part of the story, so there have actually been three previous episodes), as the characters remind us here, the three senior Autobots have disappeared, three mysterious new Decepticons have arrived from the future, senior Decepticons Megatron and Soundwave have been taken out of action, new Autobot Ultra Magnus has arrived from Cybertron, and all kinds of things have happened. There's no shortage of incident in these 11-page chapters!
But what's really innovative in this particular chapter is the storytelling structure. Ironhide narrates it in the first person, from a point some way in the future of where the story left off last week. And he's telling us in flashback what has happened since we last saw him. It's fascinating and was a completely new narrative style to me at the time - it's no wonder it stuck in my brain! The tantalising mystery of exactly what Ironhide is doing, digging and lifting rocks, runs all through the chapter, outside the scope of the main story.
I think everybody was looking forward to seeing Ultra Magnus fighting Galvatron (they were the new big toys, released in time for Christmas shopping that year, and heavily promoted as "The New Leaders" and stars of the still-mysterious upcoming movie), but I for one didn't mind the slow build-up to the inevitable conflict. It was nice to see all the other Transformers get something to do - the American comics very rarely did that, strangely enough, with the focus often being more on one or two individual Transformers, and a lot of human supporting characters. Target: 2006 ignores the humans completely and gives us an all-robot cast! I wholeheartedly approved of that kind of thing!
Of course, some Autobots are more prominent than others in this story. Hoist (the green and orange truck there in the third panel) is bizarrely neglected throughout Target: 2006. He's in about three panels of the whole epic! And the omission is even more strange when you consider he's supposed to be the maintenance guy, who gives the Autobots their regular tune-ups and services. With chief medical officer Ratchet having disappeared, surely Hoist should be the emergency medic? But he doesn't seem to do anything like that here.
Not that I particularly cared about this in 1986 - that kind of quibble is strictly the province of grown-up me. As is wondering why neither Hoist nor Mirage appear in the rest of this issue, when Mirage doesn't look damaged so much as just upside-down. I guess it was more severe than it looks. Incidentally, the American comic had several of these Autobots already on the long-term-injury list at this point, but the British reality has them just fine and dandy. Gears seems to be back on his feet here too, having been badly damaged back in the Dinobot Hunt storyline, but that's not unreasonable, since he's meant to be something of a tough guy. The American comic was downright weird about Ratchet's inability to fix his friends for months and years on end.
This whole comic is really, really great at making you want the toys of these characters! It's October, and even if you haven't got a birthday coming up, everybody is making a Christmas list by now! The British comic actually only rarely had that kind of effect, even though it was the original reason for the Transformers comic existing - the priority for Simon Furman was always to tell a great story rather than to spotlight the newest and most expensive toys on the shelves (well, except those rare occasions when he was directly ordered to do just that), but this issue happens to do both, really well! The next chapter moves to the other plot thread, on the planet Cybertron, where some of the foremost characters are non-toy-based ones who were made up for the British comic, and a couple of characters whose toys were only available in the USA.
Eight against one? I only count seven Autobots there. Hoist is apparently still putting Mirage back on his wheels, Jetfire is up in the air, Hound and Ultra Magnus are back at the base (along with the injured Autobots and Omega Supreme), Smokescreen and Tracks are... somewhere else (Ironhide 'gets' them in a couple of pages), and that seems to account for all the active Autobots. Maybe Ironhide just can't count.
The classified ads were a part of every Transformers comic. These shops and special events seemed very exciting, but at this point in time I never got to go to the big cities where they existed. Well, Nottingham on very rare special occasions, maybe. But although Nostalgia & Comics in the Broadmarsh Centre no longer exists, and nor even does the Broadmarsh Centre, the original one in Birmingham (now called Worlds Apart) is still where it always was, and just as cool as ever!
I really liked Jeff Anderson's art in this issue (the storyline had multiple different artists, each doing a chapter or two) - Geoff Senior was the particularly sensational artist, but Anderson successfully makes all the characters look like robots, while also giving them a great range of facial expressions. The colouring is great too, making Galvatron look so shiny and metallic; the British comic had access to much better-looking artistic techniques than the American stories did, so it was always a bit disappointing to go back to the ugly-looking US material.
The Constructicons never got much in the way of personality, poor guys. And since their toys were among those who weren't sold in this country, they always had a slight unattainable mystique that made us want to read about them, but it's fitting that they only get a cameo in this particular comic, since it's otherwise full of the toys you could find in Woolworth's, Argos or wherever your parents did their Christmas shopping! And who could resist asking for Galvatron, after a display like this?
The complete and utter humiliating defeat of the heroes was quite shocking, if not all that unusual for the British Transformers comic - 'Dinobot Hunt' ended with an unequivocal Decepticon victory. But this issue ends back with Ironhide in the present day, and what is he doing?
He's digging up the ultimate evil (until Galvatron came along) enemy, Megatron! And also Soundwave! I really didn't get what was going on at the time I read this, and was anxious to see what would happen next issue. And of course what happened next issue was the other plot strand of Target: 2006 - we didn't get any follow-up on this story, or that cliffhanger scene it ends with, until the following week, in №83! I had a whole two weeks to stew on the implications of this story, and it's no wonder my dreams got to work on producing a continuation!
Of course, there was still a bit more of the comic to read, after the main story had finished. That was another difference from the American comics - in Britain we always had a back-up strip, and a couple of other little features...
Lew Stringer's Robo-Capers were a regular weekly fixture. It was now the only comedy mini-feature in Transformers, with Mychailo Kazybrid's Matt and the Cat having ended with №73 - in the early days, there were no end of other bits and pieces of filler in Transformers, but it was gradually developing into a comic that focused primarily on the main title feature. No British comic could possibly be without a Lew Stringer strip, though! The very idea is unthinkable!
And everyone wanted a BMX in 1986. I don't think many people particularly cared about buying special oil for it, but maybe this advert generated a couple of sales. I (probably) got a BMX for my birthday on October 14th, although as usual I've had to rely on my brother's superior autobiographical memory to tell me about it. It sounds right, though, and even with my own dull memory I can confirm that I never once oiled the thing.
The collected edition of Target: 2006 doesn't include the fact files. This one about Ultra Magnus gives us information about his origins that aren't mentioned in the comic stories themselves, and really should be read as an integral part of the whole storyline. Fact files in the Transformers comic were generally just lifted from the American material, but these ones were different.
And then of course there's the letters page. Grimlock had only just taken over from original letters-page host Soundwave, and the letters printed here are just catching up with the reaction to the new regime. I preferred Soundwave - he was an evil Decepticon, after all, and could be very nasty to letter-writers and Autobot-lovers. Grimlock, for all his rough and tough attitude, was still a goodie, and everyone secretly rooted for the baddies in comics (generations of British comic readers were taught by Dennis the Menace that this was the correct moral stance to adopt, especially in the eighties, when Dennis and similar characters were quite remorseless in their bullying of softies!)
And then there was Hercules. Transformers back-up strips were whatever American series Marvel UK had access to, with the sole criterion for suitability for the Transformers comic being that there was at least one robot, or something that looked like a robot, in it. So the Hercules limited series, in which he's accompanied by a robot Recorder, was an obvious choice. The previous back-up strip was Rocket Raccoon, and when Hercules finished it was Spitfire and the Troubleshooters. Hacked up into five or six-page chapters, the stories were never very readable, and certainly not something I'd do more than cast an uninterested eye over for the sake of completeness.
Ooh, it's Galactus. If I hadn't been so excited by the Transformers story, that might have provoked a bit of a reaction from me. Galactus, after all, features in the Secret Wars sticker album that came free with this comic! Which was, in fact, my first introduction to a lot of Marvel superheroes - I hadn't read the Secret Wars comic from Marvel UK, or more than a handful of other superhero comics here and there. My obsession with superheroes didn't start until my teenage years - at the age of nearly-ten, I didn't know much about the whole concept of superheroes except the few random fragments I'd happened to see in passing. Although those did include a couple of really really great Spider-Man stories, which gave me a basic grounding in just how good they could be!
We did indeed reserve Transformers with our newsagent, although there was really no need to fill in this form. It did mean that all our Transformers comics came with PRIDMORE written in capital letters on the cover - this copy I've scanned here isn't the original (which was read to pieces decades ago) but a more recent acquisition. I like that this form makes it clear you have to get your parent or guardian's signature before you can reserve the comic with your newsagent - perhaps there had been cases of parents being taken by surprise for demands of 30p for a comic their child had ordered!
And the back cover is an advert for The New Leaders! Which turned out to be a bit of a misnomer. Ultra Magnus is fleetingly the Autobot leader during the movie, but never in the comic stories. Still, at this point we all assumed he was going to take over Autobot leadership imminently, and were surprised when it never happened. Since the American comic (somehow) didn't have to use Ultra Magnus and Galvatron, they were reserved for the British stories, which had to fit into the American continuity in between issues. Poor Magnus never had a chance of ascending to the position of New Leader.
Now, as for this dream I promised to tell you about. It must have happened during the fortnight between reading this issue and reading the one where the Earth-based side of the storyline resumed, and have been spawned by my impatience to find out what was going to happen next! I can get even closer to fixing an exact date when I dreamed it, in fact, because I'm almost certain it was at our mother's house in Boston. At this point in time, we were spending every Tuesday and Wednesday night, and Fridays and Saturdays of alternate weeks, at Willoughby Road - an equitable arrangement presumably intended to keep everyone sort of happy, though I'm not sure it succeeded. I could certainly have done without the mid-week journeying all the way to Boston, ten miles away from our father's house, with school being nearly five miles more out the other side, but does anyone ask my opinion? I tell you, childhood is rough, and the only mitigating factor is that I didn't actually care in the slightest, and was really only interested in things like the Transformers comic.
(International readers of this blog might like to know, incidentally, that the 'Boston' I'm complaining about here is the real, original, genuine Boston, in Lincolnshire, England, and not that fake one in Massachusetts that some people think of when they hear 'Boston')
This wasn't the only time my dreams have provided an ending for a story I was half-way through. To this day I can't hear about the Doctor Who story The Keys of Marinus without struggling to remember which bits of it actually happened and which were part of the dream I had when I fell asleep half way through reading the novelisation. But in this case, I was actively involved in the next installment of Target: 2006! In fact, I was hanging out with the Autobots in our bedroom at Willoughby Road - I forget which ones, but Trailbreaker was definitely standing in the corner and supervising proceedings - and trying to make contact with the future. There was a small hole in the space-time continuum on the wall of the room (the bump in the wall made by the disused chimney), represented by a sort of pattern of blue and purple dots of the type you'd see in comics where this kind of thing happened, and by means of flying a kite through this hole, we were trying to establish a link to the Autobots of the year 2006.
There was a lot of static, but something definitely got through, and we heard a voice saying something. One of the Autobots told me excitedly that it must be a voice from the future, because it was a Ford's voice, and the only Ford among the Autobots is Ironhide, who's currently absent "digging his own grave", as seen in the comic.
I do love that Transformers who turn into distinct makes of car would have distinct voices. This is a wonderful innovation of my subconscious mind, and really needs to be worked into the next Transformers movie. Ironhide, of course, being originally a Japanese toy, turns into a Nissan rather than a Ford, but I didn't know that at the time, and he had a distinctly American accent on the cartoon, so naturally I'd think Ford.
But establishing contact with the future was a pivotal moment that meant the Autobots would be able to defeat Galvatron after all, despite their crushing defeat! All thanks to me! And so, having saved the day and brought Target: 2006 to a satisfactory conclusion, I woke up and told my brother all about the dream. He said I was making it up.
I'm very grateful to an unknown blog-reader for informing me last month that the "Baby-Face" Finlayson comic libraries I so admire were the work of Henry Davies and not, as I had blithely assumed for all these years, Ron Spencer. It's nice to give credit where it's due, at least eventually!
And now, thanks to my brother, I've just got my hands on the Beano (No. 2338, May 9th, 1987) with Baby-Face's final weekly appearance, in which he tangles with a conspicuously off-model Dennis the Menace and the Beano editor, and gets himself posted back to America.
I wouldn't like to offer an opinion on who drew this one, under the circumstances, but it's not a very thrilling end to Baby-Face's Beano career. I grew up with the Britain-based "cutest bandit around" incarnation, tangling primarily with British-uniformed policemen, and the notion of him as an American bandit was by this point strictly confined to the comic libraries, so the idea of sending him back where he came from didn't really resonate with me as a fitting ending. I did always like those captions at the end of a final strip for a character who'd been dropped - things like "Well, that feast will keep The Three Bears busy for a while! Next week you can see [whoever replaced them] on this page!"
Back in May 1987, there's a trailer in this one for the two stars who'd be making their debut next week - Little Monkey and Karate Sid. As I recall, Little Monkey didn't last long at all, and though Sid had a bit more staying power, he never really made the big time. Not even when he acquired a fire-breathing dragon sidekick!
Hey. everybody, it's time to sign up for a new season of Memory League! If you're interested in fast memorisation of cards, numbers, words, names and images, come and join the fun!
Especially if you're an old-timer who hasn't been around for a while! I really want to build up more of a community of memory weirdos in this country especially - it's dwindled away of late, and I haven't had the time or money to arrange things myself. I'll see what I can do on the cheap and see if we can get another Friendly Championship, like in the good old days, up and running!
Yes, I'm officially back in training! We started out the way I did last year around this time (it was May 19th last year, now I come to look it up. Feels like an eternity ago!) with a Cooper test and maximum push-ups. We're not going to follow exactly the same training regime as last year, but something along the same lines - only this time, I don't have to keep it a secret, and I can tell all my blog-readers about it! Aren't you thrilled?
I don't know who Cooper was, but he/she/it (it might have been the car) decided that the way to test people is to see how far they can run or walk in twelve minutes. Last year I managed to stagger only a short distance (I'm not sure exactly how far, because I didn't have the Runkeeper app yet; I have an idea it was just over 800m), but I worked up to an impressive 1.43km by September. This time, starting off at a comfortable pace, it was 1.21km, which I still think is pretty good for a brisk walk. And since I accidentally set Runkeeper to measure 'running' instead of 'walking', it told me I'd broken all my records for running activities!
But my ability to do push-ups has come on by leaps and bounds. At that first assessment a year ago I managed five before collapsing. At my final assessment in September I did 22. Today it was 25, and I'm sure I can get even better with a bit of regular training! Anyone who shouts "Drop and give me twenty" at me in future will have no cause to complain!
